I’ll admit I kept my distance from Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail for a long time, thinking it would eventually deliver the same old spiel about India’s rat race, something we’ve been assaulted with in Chopra’s 2008 production 3 Idiots, and umpteen TVF shows on India’s many competitive entrance exams. Chopra’s middling work as a director in the last two decades post-Parinda also probably had something to do with it, ensuring my cynicism remained despite a promising start. I was almost confident that it was only a matter of time before the film’s graph would plummet. Hence, I was surprised to find myself holding my breath during the final stretch. It was around then that I realised that the film had me in its palm, and I was desperately rooting for the protagonist – Manoj Kumar Sharma (Vikrant Massey) – a boy out of a village in Chambal (Madhya Pradesh), preparing for his UPSC exams in Delhi. It was also during this very scene when I realised Chopra’s film had floored me.
12th Fail is a painfully old story of an underdog, built around India’s unforgiving and unequal education system. A boy living in a faraway village, sees an impossible dream. The first time we see him, he’s furiously making notes. A voiceover clarifies – he’s making chits on the day before his 12th board exams. We see a municipal school and callous teachers – the kind who write “borad exams” on the blackboard without a second thought. Manoj’s goal is to pass his boards so he can take up the job of an office peon. All he has to do is, replicate the answers from his chits into the answer sheet.
Unfortunately for Manoj and other students, an honest cop (Priyanshu Chatterjee) enters the picture. He won’t allow any cheating during boards, and as a result, the entire batch fails. It’s a wake-up call for the likes of Manoj, who haven’t had a role model in their lives until then. Almost starstruck by the cop and his aura, he makes up his mind – he will become a police officer, just like the DSP in his village.
Using the last savings of his grandmother (thanks to her monthly armed forces pension), Manoj makes his way to Gwalior first, and then eventually to Delhi. Training his eyes on the UPSC – arguably the toughest exam to crack in the world – Manoj’s life becomes a rollercoaster over the next 7-8 years, and we become a part of it.
There’s barely anything in 12th Fail that we haven’t seen before. A new boy in a strange city, having all his belongings stolen on the very first day – it used to be a staple scene in most Hindi films, especially when it involved the characters making their way to Bombay. And yet, it doesn’t feel repetitive in Chopra’s film, because we’re personally invested in Manoj’s journey. We’re in his shoes, as he makes the decision to not go back home until he’s made something of his life.
On paper, 12th Fail shouldn’t work like it does. It’s not the most novel story, and the obstacles are something we’re all acutely aware of, even possibly desensitised to. A boy from hinterland India, barely scraping through his 12th boards, living in a big city, someone who misreads ‘tourism in India’ as ‘terrorism in India’, someone who has to work 12-15 hours a day so he can study for six hours and then survive on three hours of sleep. The odds are so comprehensively stacked against him, no one would blame him for failing, or giving up. But he doesn’t – and that’s what becomes “inspirational” about this story.
It’s a journey we’ve been on in earlier films, but 12th Fail has a stellar ‘feel’ for authenticity. It makes a few surprising choices – Manoj’s lack of proficiency in English is never mocked, it’s a source for tragedy. The teacher at the coaching centre could’ve been someone with tics, which could be mined for humour. Instead, Chopra casts Vikas Divyakirti, who runs a coaching centre for UPSC exams in real life. Unlike the eccentric teachers we’ve seen in films, Divyakirti uses his tranquil voice to bring a thousand racing minds [in his class] to a pause. It’s only a small part of the world of 12th Fail, but it helps the audience fully immerse itself in Manoj’s journey.
He also surrounds his protagonist with a lovely bunch of actors – Anshuman Pushkar (who broke out in the Netflix show Jamtara) plays the ‘veteran’ in the Mukherjee Nagar area, who didn’t make it. So, he makes it his life’s mission to coach the next generation of hopefuls, especially those with limited means like Manoj. There’s Anantvijay Joshi as Pandey – the narrator of the film – who studies alongside Manoj, but is significantly more ‘well-settled’. Harish Khanna, playing Manoj’s father, undertakes his own journey of fighting a lengthy legal battle against his superiors in a government office and is handed the film’s finest scene, where he tells his son the uselessness of upright honesty in the world. It’s the voice of a man with a bitter awakening too late in his life – only to be reminded, by his own son, of the values he passed on to his son.
Above all, 12th Fail is a paean to Vikrant Massey’s astronomical amounts of sincerity. Manoj’s journey through all the obstacles could also serve as a parallel for Massey – a gifted young actor – charting his way through the jungle of a Bollywood career. Just like any other walk of life, the system benefits a certain kind of prospect, and rarely reciprocates hard work. He’s never been terrible even in the most questionable films of his career, and therefore, it feels like a personal victory to see a film doing justice to Massey’s dedication to throwing himself into a part. Seeing Manoj emerge from the darkest holes and greet people with a wide smile, despite going through the most trying phases, is an image from the film that I’ll carry with me for a long time.
Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s 12th Fail almost feels like an early Rajkumar Hirani film – when simplicity of thought didn’t necessarily culminate into contrived screenwriting. And where the story always knew how to play a delicate dance of good intentions and entertainment. Unlike most underdog films in mainstream Hindi cinema, where one eye is on the box office, the tears and catharsis in 12th Fail always feel earned. This could’ve very easily been a sappy, sentimental film – but Chopra never compromises the idealism in his story for an easier, cheaper way. 12th Fail is proof that crowd-pleasing films can find a way to be so, without losing sight of their integrity.