Quirk and whim are probably the two toughest behaviors/traits to translate/transform from paper to the screen. "The character is quirky" might be the brief to the actor or when the writer sets about sketching the role. But what does that mean, and more importantly, can the behavior be sustained throughout the length of the movie? Quirky is not weird, it is not abnormal, it is being off, just by a bit. And how many turns on the screw to dial up from normal to quirky? To each his own. The one film maker in Telugu who built his career around quirkiness is Vamsi. Most of the characters in his movies have that added sense of urgency, extra indulgence in the situation, a bit more rapid in the dialogue delivery and a touch more frenzy in the reaction. And these characters remain the same through the length of the movie, and not pick up and drop the trait as per the situation. Think of Mallikarjuna Rao characters in almost all of Vamsi's films - Ladies Tailor, Anweshana, Sri Kanakamalakshmi etc. That IS quirk. Quirk is all behavior, and not truly dialogue dependent.
Next comes whim. What constitutes as whimsical on screen? One thing it is not, whim is not dispirited or mean-spirited. It tries to make best of a rotten situation and tries to wrap a colorful bow-tie around it. Whim is optimistic at its core. Where whimsy truly works is in children's movies or the faithfully romantic fares, for, in both scenarios, cynicism has no place. Children are seldom beat down by the gravity of the situation, they fall down, dust off and get back on the saddle, with little dent to the spirit. Same with ones madly in love. For an objective observer, whimsy is plain foolishness. But strength of the whim is the sincerity in its belief, that things are always going to turn out better. That is the reason why whimsy is often set in gloomy situations to act as a fitting antidote. And the one filmmaker who persisted with both quirk and whim for the entire length of his illustrious career is Wes Anderson. (Coen Brothers hit the holy grail of this combination in "Raising Arizona" and "The Big Lebowski"; and that delightful French feature "Amelie"). To put a spin on "dying is easy, comedy is hard", "indulgence is easy, quirk is hell", and Venkatesh Maha finds it the hard way with "Rao Bahadur"
Set aside the broader themes about pedigree, lineage and societal expectations that Maha attempts to address in the movie for a second, and consider his delivery mechanism. He clearly imagines Rao's character as a quirky one, beset with the onset of senility, and gives him all the necessary cantankerous ticks befitting the age - speech pattern, body language and thought process. Amusing.... He then sets about building the world around Rao as an off-kilter one - creepers snake up his upstairs bedroom, the fruits of which he uses to support the legs of a broken chair; people around him speak in hushed tones about his abnormality; surreal imagery of talking portraits, flying insects pervade his universe. Charming..... But the writing never rises above these setups. The conversations, mostly functional dialogue, moves in an out of social commentaries, mythologies and politics. Quirk and surreality make their presences felt per the convenience of the script. It is this constant imbalance between real and surreal that never lets the movie settle into a groove and find its rhythm.
A wonderful and a surreal dance number about social conditioning (reminiscent of the bowling ball dance number in "The Big Lebowski", coincidentally also called "What condition my condition was in") finds its place in the midst of drab proceedings. He goes on building up and also concealing things at the same time for his big reveal at the end, but by that time, the ultimate message does not really add up to a hill of beans. The characters mouth just what is required for the situation and even that in a particularly forced fashion. The writing (particularly, the dialogues) delivers the content in a strictly functional way. For what starts off with a quirk and a smirk, the charm soon gets buried under heaps of exposition. It serves well to remember Wes Anderson here, a filmmaker who always takes the road less travelled, with his "ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances" template, except the extraordinary circumstances are only a delightful turn away from the ordinary. No better example than "The Fantastic Mr. Fox" that turns a children's adventurous folktale into cautionary tale about parenting, responsibility and accountability, all with its deadpan quirk, and in stop motion animation, to boot, where the intent lurks behind the content, and the content delivered in delight.
By the end of "Rao Bahadur", it certainly feels that there was a good movie there somewhere, if only there was a little joy in the filmmaking for a setting and a setup that staunchly refused to be anything but normal.
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