November 1, 2025
by Carla Hay
Directed by Barbara Miller and Philip Delaquis
Culture Representation: The documentary film “Wisdom of Happiness” features a monologue from the 14th Dalai Lama, the leader of Tibetan Buddhism.
Culture Clash: The 14th Dalai Lama talks about his life and shares advice for inner and outer happiness.
Culture Audience: “Wisdom of Happiness” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the Dalai Lama and other spiritual leaders, but this slow-moving and repetitive documentary offers very basic and cliché advice.
The Dalai Lama’s messages about peace and love are admirable, but this mishandled documentary presents those messages as a rambling, extremely repetitive Dalai Lama monologue, with many visual images that belong in an infomercial. “Wisdom of Happiness” is a 94-minute movie, but it should’ve been a movie that’s 30 minutes or less because what’s said in the movie is repeated to the point of irritation. The film editing is simply awful because it fails to rein in the redundant content and lets it turn “Wisdom of Happiness” into a bloated and boring movie.
Directed by Barbara Miller and Philip Delaquis, “Wisdom of Happiness” has the 14th Dalai Lama as the only person speaking in this documentary, which alternates between showing him speaking at a close-up angle and showing various visual images. It’s partly a repeat loop of very generic, common-sense advice and partly the Dalai Lama talking about certain parts of his life. It’s like watching someone famous give a stream-of-consciousness lecture that goes around in circles, but the people in charge of the presentation are too star-struck to do anything about this long-winded preaching.
The 14th Daila Lama (whose birth name is Lhamo Thondup and whose spiritual name is Jetsun Jamphel Ngawang Lobsang Yeshe Tenzin Gyatso, shortened as Tenzin Gyatso) was born in 1935 and became the 14th Dalai Lama in 1939. He was born in Takster, Tibet, and came from a poor farming family. In the documentary he mentions that his mother was his “real teacher of compassion,” because she gave him unconditional love, and he says he never saw her get angry.
The Dalai Lama also talks about his youth and how Tibet’s clashes with China’s Communist government led to the Tibetan uprising of 1959 and his exile to India, where he has lived ever since. The documentary has some archival footage of the Dalai Lama and Tibetans during this tumultuous period in Tibetan history. The Dalai Lama says he felt “fear, anxiety, doubt and sadness” when he was first exiled, but he found inner strength in his faith.
Most of the Dalai Lama’s “wisdom of happiness” advice consists of very generic statements, such as “The ultimate source of happiness is within yourself” or “So long as you live, serve others, help others, never bring harm on others.” This monologue is interspersed with visual images of nature, architecture, or people (often shown in slow motion) looking happy. A lot of these images are stock images or look like they were filmed for a spiritual retreat advertisement.
Just because a documentary has a famous person as the star of the documentary doesn’t mean that the documentary’s filmmaking is automatically good. The Dalai Lama deserves better for his inspiring messages than this dreadfully tedious documentary that is very likely to put people to sleep.
Abramorama released “Wisdom of Happiness” in select U.S. cinemas on October 17, 2025.