12th Fail Movie Review: This is the India story!

Film 12th FailDirector Vidhu Vinod ChopraActors Vikrant Massey Anant V JoshiU DramaRating 45What is it if not craft that you watch a lengthy preclimax sequence lasting several minutes sometimes in slowmotion where nothing much happens on screen But for a candidate for an IAS entrance exam simply heading to the designated UPSC office in New Delhi to be called in for an interviewFrom his entering the main gate into the hall with other applicants whorsquove made it thus far down to the mundaneness of sitting around eventually getting ushered into the room of intervieweeshellip The filmmaker has you by the eyeballsOnce yoursquove achieved thatmdashsurely the hardest partmdashI guess it gets sufficiently easy to deliverreceive lessonsthoughts on struggles and journeys of the Indian lessprivileged youngSuch as the boy in this film from rural Chambal aiming for a place in the Indian civil services Is this the clicheacuted ragstoriches story NoI found instead in 12th Fail which shouldrsquove ideally been titled Restart its tagline a film about the generosity of fellow humans That no onersquos really selfmade That it takes a proverbial village literally in this case to script a success story And that generosity can come from anywheremdashthe grandmother Sarita Joshi the girlfriend Medha Sharma an unknown elder Priyanshu Chatterjee a stranger on the street Anant V Joshihellip As with circumstances there are enough people pulling you up as theyrsquore pushing you down On that balance hangs your life often doesnrsquot itTherefore in terms of intent or flow the film that 12th Fail reminded me of is actually The Pursuit of Happyness 2006 Which is such tall praise to fall from that having made that analogy myself I must warn you all the same about resetting your expectations right awayTherersquos still nothing to take away from this filmrsquos greatness which rests on the fact that itrsquos not the greatman story or about some sorta genius as it were Those are biopics as it were This could be millions of Indiansrsquo story that you could hear wherever you goFailure being built into the DNA of relative deprivationmdashstarting with the luck of the draw for where you were born and for wherever you set off to thereafter Not everybody lands as Dhirubhai Ambani Guru 2007But you could certainly gain admission into a fine engineeringmedical college try and try again to finally pass the CA exam invest in a small shop practice in sport or repeatedly audition for roles to become an actor just an actor at least getting close to whatever you had in mindThis film is of course about one such civilservices aspirant Itrsquos based on the book by Anurag Pathak that the film is named aftermdashadmittedly inspired by the life of one Manoj Kumar SharmaVikrant Massey plays this lead role By the looks of it this is the kinda casting yoursquod consider quite similar to say Hrithik Roshan as the Bihari maths teacher in Super 30 2019 In the sense that on the face of it itrsquos casting against type But thatrsquos also throwing a challenge at an actor to rise up to a role beyond getting bronzedtanned up for itThere is a sattvic quality or sincerity that emanates from within in Massey Sahib hence thatrsquos impossible to miss His character also represents a huge Indian subculture of students whose entire professional lives hinge on the outcome of one exammdashas we survey the damp depressing streets of a lsquocampateesan capitalrsquo such as Mukherjee Nagar in North DelhiItrsquos a tough battlefield where the dice couldnrsquot be more loaded against the blindly hopeful Hindi medium education for instance is a natural disadvantagemdashonly 3040 of the 2 lakh of those types get throughI have sort of observed this world closely and fled from holding any such ambition over a test where the entire world is the frickinrsquo syllabusWhat if you donrsquot make it Whatrsquore you gonna do with Google inside your brain and the number of years lost attempting to vomit it in a question paper Or maybe that gives the more possessed kids deserving of a shot at the sun with everything to lose a levelled field3 Idiots 2009 also produced by Vidhu Vinod Chopra was equally a comment on an oppressive education system that overvalues rote learningIn hindsight my issue with the incredibly influential 3 Idiots as a film that spoke to an entire generation even beyond India is it didnrsquot offer any counterpoint For instance what if passion was overrated Whatrsquos wrong with becoming a wellpaid engineer after allLikewise you feel 12th Fail doesnrsquot quite address why the civil services should be so coveted a job that your life depends on it Whyrsquos there so much power vested in handful bada sahibs in mofussil districts that itrsquos equivalent to becoming a local god lording over helpless serfs Neither situation is true for Britain for that mattermdashthe country that placed this colonial administration on India and we carried on with itBut thatrsquos a longer conversation that ideally this film must inspire As for the film itself in every way it marks the return of Chopramdashdirector of the iconic Khamosh 1986 murdermystery Parinda 1989 underworld 1942 A Love Story 1994 romancemdashin 2023 delving deep into a space that belongs progressively more to younglings at TVF delivering stellar content such as Aspirants on the same subjectAs a director hersquos had a false start or twomdashBroken Horses 2015 crime thriller in particular that seemed a failed attempt at flourish rather than a film 12th Fail is the reverseWhich obviously isnrsquot to suggest the flourish is absent This is essentially Chopra 71 doing a restart Whatrsquos there not to laud about it

12th Fail Movie Review: This is the India story!

Film: 12th Fail
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Actors: Vikrant Massey, Anant V Joshi
U: Drama
Rating: 4/5

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Home / Entertainment / Bollywood News / Article / 12th Fail Movie Review: This is the India story!

12th Fail Movie Review: This is the India story!

Film: 12th Fail Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra Actors: Vikrant Massey, Anant V Joshi U: Drama Rating: 4/5

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Latest Photos

Latest Videos

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Mid-Day Fast

Film: 12th Fail
Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra
Actors: Vikrant Massey, Anant V Joshi
U: Drama
Rating: 4/5