The Caryatids

EI: Ancient history seems to mean a great deal to your Family-Firm.

MM: It means everything. It is everything...Those ancient Greeks, they would never give women a vote, but piling a building on a woman's head, that was classical behavior for them.

EI: So the Caryatids collapsed, and yet, after that...

MM: They were all such capable, energetic, serious-minded women. Doing their impossible jobs in unbearable circumstances. Once they changed positions, they revived.

EI: As long as each clone was doing the impossible job that someone else should be doing, they each felt like they were on holiday.

MM: Well, of course that is part of their mythos: that elegant, neat solution. They rotated their roles, smooth and easy, without ever missing a beat. But that was a neat solution for us, not for them. We who loved them-the various communities who took them in-in many ways, we made them behave in that way. We forced the issue. We all felt much happier when a new Caryatid arrived to save us from the ugly wreck of the old one. People insisted that they could do the impossible. Because we needed the impossible done. Obviously, it was impossible for them to switch roles without our collusion, but we gave them that because we benefited by it. It was our happy ending, not theirs.

EI: Critics say that Sonja was much better at playing Mila Montalban than the actual Mila Montalban.

MM: That's a cheap shot at a fine actress, but...Well, Mila had no trouble running an Adriatic island resort. Vera blossomed inside a Chinese high-tech research camp. The Chinese much preferred her to Sonja. Sometime later Radmila went to China, while Sonja went to the island...Once in rotation, they didn't simply bear their burdens in suffering, they were able to thrive.

EI: It seems so simple that they could trade existences and end happily.

MM: Oh no, no-believe me, nothing ended. And happiness ? It's sheer arrogance for any outsider, any normal person to think that we could solve their problems...Nobody ever imposes a solution on those women. It's all I can do just to describe them.

EI: As the scriptwriter, you mean.

MM: Well, as a contemporary media creative, I always wanted to do a classic biopic about my mothers. I mean, to make a cinematic artwork with a linear narrative. A story line with no loose ends, where the plot makes sense. I enjoy that impossible creative challenge. It's impossible because only history can do that for us. Sometimes it takes twenty-five years, even two hundred years to crush real life into a narrative compact enough to understand.

EI: They say that to end with a funeral is the classic sign of a tragedy. Your latest project, The Caryatids, concludes with a funeral.

MM: Well, that's a mother-daughter issue...Look, can I be frank here? That narrative is supposedly about my mothers, but as a pop-entertainment product, The Caryatids is the ultimate Mary Montalban star vehicle. It's not about them: it's all me. Obviously it's me. I produced it, I directed it, I wrote the script, and I play all of them. I play every major part: I play Radmila, Vera, Sonja, the bit villain part of Biserka, I even play the dead grandmother in the glass coffin.

EI: Why did you make that creative choice, Mary?

MM: Because I'm a guaranteed draw and I can get big financing. But...well, I'm the only actress I could trust to inhabit those roles. Because I'm the only woman on Earth with any hint as to what's going on in their heads.

EI: "To understand all is to forgive all."

MM: I know that sounds corny, but, well, once you have a child of your own, like I do, you come to realize that the world's oldest, dumbest nursery maxims are the keys to reality.

EI: Surely somebody else understands the Caryatids. What about their other children?

MM: You mean Erika's brood? Give me a break!

EI: How about John Montalban? He often said the Caryatids were all one organism. Was he right about that?

MM: He's a clever guy, my dad. That big scandal that wrecked his career, people need to overlook that. He couldn't help himself-he was ruling-class in a planet that was ungovernable. If you just leave my old dad alone, he just reads his Synchronic philosophy and collects twentieth-century fine arts.

EI: I never quite got it about that so-called Synchronic philosophy.

MM: Well, that's the true genius of Synchronism; it's a futurist's philosophy, so it's permanently ahead of popular understanding.

EI: Synchronists seem to worry a lot about giant volcanoes. And the sun blowing up.