Mahanth S. Joishy is Editor of usindiamonitor

Available to stream on Netflix. Directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. No spoilers.

My parents are staying over in Wisconsin these days. Like so many who grew up in India they prefer to watch Indian movies most nights if we stay in. In this our tastes diverge for the most part. Based on my 40+ years of watching Hindi, Kannada, and Tamil productions, committing to one of these films is a gamble that pays off less often than it should. Many a time I’ve gamely joined my parents in the living room to give Bollywood a chance for 15-20 minutes before quitting to go do something else out of sheer boredom. The usual predictable reasons are to blame: terrible songs too early and too often, terrible acting, terrible action violence sequences, terrible attempts at romance, terrible plots, terrible screenwriting. Same old, same old. Isn’t that disappointing considering the vast historical and cultural richness of India that its film industry should better represent?

Thankfully, sometimes you hit the jackpot that encourages one to keep gambling. A few days back a 2023 Bollywood masterpiece was projected onto my living room wall called 12th Fail. It suffers from none of those typical subcontinental afflictions. We were riveted from beginning to end. In fact the film sent chills down my spine- in the best possible way. The fact that 12th Fail is based on the true story of Indian civil servants Manoj Kumar Sharma and Shraddha Joshi is the ultimate icing on the cake.

The movie connected with me on a deep, primal level from the start, for I have been a proud civil servant my entire adult life. Every now and then us government employees could use a bit of reassurance to keep our chins up. It’s hard not to sometimes question your life decisions in a world where nearly all of your friends and relatives outside of your workplace are categorically much better off than you are financially.

But money isn’t everything when it comes to fulfilling careers. And perhaps high difficulty makes a career that much sweeter. The story of Manoj and Shraddha, brilliantly portrayed by Vikrant Massey and Medha Shankr, damn near made me cry. Theirs is a story of enduring hardship and poverty, Indian exam hell and corruption- all in a world where integrity is almost non-existent- a joke to be laughed at by those who know the “way the world really works.”

Manoj’s character-defined father and one particularly honest police officer set the example for Manoj to follow toward the beginning of the film, where we first meet him in a classroom where literally the entire high school is cheating by getting the answers from the teacher himself. At one point Manoj looks at the police boss who gets in the way of this cheating scheme, with deep reverence and stated a line that sent chills down my spine, loose translation, “This is the first time I have ever seen someone with so much power having honesty.”

This line is where I almost cried and felt a tingle down my spine. This is what I will always aspire to in my own life.

But the challenges Manoj faces are impossible for most of us to fathom, for the success of our story’s hero is not linear and many people needed to sacrifice of themselves to help him along the way. Passing some of the most exclusive entrance exams in India with ridiculously few ever passing must be rendered that much harder by abject poverty and having to work all day at manual labor jobs in horrible conditions not exactly conducive to studying all night. 100 times along the way it would have been easier to give up on his dreams, to give up on his girl, to admit defeat to his family, than to persevere.

This is one of the best and most inspiring Bollywood offerings I have seen in years, full stop. No matter what you do, you can draw something from this tale. #Restart !