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| RESOLUTION @ SAT |
The glowing ember of a campfire—ancient, intimate, and eternal—becomes the unlikely axis for one of the most affecting cinematic-musical experiences of recent years. Resolution, now screening in Montréal’s Society for Arts and Technology (SAT) through September 26, is not content to be an album film, nor merely an immersive visual poem. Instead, it declares itself, almost humbly, as a “cinephonic rhapsody for the soul.” The phrase is no hyperbole. What unfolds over its brisk yet emotionally weighty 46 minutes is both transportive and grounding, a rare fusion of spectacle and sincerity.
Conceived by director Scott Berman, a veteran of visual artistry for both Tripping Daisy and The Polyphonic Spree, Resolution takes the 2023 choral rock album Salvage Enterprise and cracks it open like a geode. Each of its nine songs reveals not just the glittering musical craft of Tim DeLaughter’s ensemble but an inner world rendered in panoramic, dome-filling visual landscapes. The SAT’s Satosphere—a 360-degree planetarium-like venue with eight synchronized projectors and a 93.5-speaker surround system—becomes both cathedral and cradle, holding the viewer in an embrace of sound and light.
The premise is deceptively simple: nine individuals, seated around a campfire, each offer a song—sometimes directly, sometimes through the visual metaphor that blooms above them. As the fire crackles, shadows stretch long, then retreat, making room for visions that range from the grandiose to the whimsical. One moment we are skimming the sun-warmed ridges of an infinite canyon; the next we are watching marionette-like puppets race RC cars across a salt-flat desert. Ships float lazily in clouds, constellations dissolve into stained-glass mosaics, and kaleidoscopic star-fields pulse in time with the music’s crescendos.
If this sounds indulgent, it is—but in the way that a long exhale is indulgent after holding your breath. Berman and his creative collaborators (including Emmy-winning Creative Director Ryan Hartsell) have a gift for pacing that keeps Resolution from drifting into the merely pretty. Every image, however fantastical, is tethered to an emotional through-line: the rediscovery of hope. It is a hope neither naïve nor saccharine, but one earned through the narrative’s slow march from uncertainty to belonging.
The album at the heart of the project—Salvage Enterprise by The Polyphonic Spree—is itself a layered work, equal parts psychedelic uplift and choral earnestness. DeLaughter, the group’s founder and frontman, has long been an architect of large-scale optimism, but here his compositions take on new depth in the visual context. The band’s exuberance, often compared to the kaleidoscopic energy of The Beatles or the anthemic swagger of Oasis, is channeled into something more panoramic and—dare one say—pastoral. The music is not just heard; it is inhabited.
And what a place to inhabit. The Satosphere is no ordinary screen—it is a vault, a hemisphere that seems to erase the line between audience and image. The sense of immersion is total. You don’t watch Resolution; you fall into it. The eight projectors stitch together a seamless 360-degree tapestry, while the nearly 100-channel speaker system creates a sonic topography where sound moves as fluidly as light. A guitar riff might skitter over your shoulder; a chorus might bloom from directly above. The result is an experience that makes conventional surround sound feel quaint.
Berman’s staging of the campfire—its warm flicker surrounded by the endless possibilities of the dome—becomes the film’s masterstroke. It anchors the viewer amidst the visual excess, a reminder that however cosmic the imagery, the human scale remains. Around this fire, we recognize archetypes: the weary traveler, the dreamer, the skeptic, the healer. Their songs become confessions, prayers, and invitations, each drawing us closer to the central thesis: that hope, once rekindled, can light the way forward.
The film’s visual grammar shifts with each track. Some sequences are painterly, with saturated hues and deliberate brush-stroke textures; others are crystalline, almost photoreal, evoking the sensation of drone-flight through impossible terrains. The technical achievement here is substantial—credit goes to the international team of Oscar and Emmy winners who bring Disney-caliber polish without Disney’s occasionally cloying sentimentality. The integration of practical animation, CGI, and live-action elements feels effortless, even when the imagery veers toward the surreal.
Yet Resolution is not just a feast for the senses; it is, crucially, a balm. At a time when audiences are accustomed to irony as a default emotional register, Berman’s work risks sincerity—and succeeds. This is a film that wants to make you feel good, but not cheaply. Its hope is grounded in the acknowledgment of darkness, of the long night before the dawn. The transformation from shadow to light is gradual, mirroring the lived reality of grief, healing, and renewal.
One of the most affecting sequences arrives midway through, during a track that begins in near-silence, the campfire dimmed to embers. A single figure hums, their voice a tremor in the quiet. Slowly, harmonies gather, first tentative, then swelling, until the dome itself seems to vibrate. Above, a fleet of lanterns ascends into the night sky, each carrying a faint constellation inside. It is a moment that bypasses the intellect and lands squarely in the chest.
The audience, on the evening I attended, was visibly moved. People reclined in their seats as though surrendering to a tide; others leaned forward, hands clasped, eyes bright. When the final track resolved into a horizon bathed in soft morning light, there was a palpable reluctance to leave. Not because the spectacle had ended, but because the fragile calm it fostered felt worth holding onto.
It is tempting to categorize Resolution within the lineage of visual album films—Pink Floyd: The Wall, Beyoncé’s Lemonade, or even the psychedelic concert films of the late ’60s. Yet it resists easy comparison. The Polyphonic Spree’s choral expansiveness, paired with Berman’s immersive sensibilities, produces something that is less a film and more a guided inner journey. It shares DNA with meditation apps, yes, but also with the great romantic symphonies and the ceremonial warmth of gathering around a literal fire.
Of course, Resolution will not be for everyone. Viewers expecting a conventional narrative may find its structure too loose, its “plot” too abstract. Those allergic to earnestness may chafe at its unapologetic embrace of the uplifting. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms—to step inside the dome, switch off the phone, and simply receive—it offers a rare, resonant gift.
***** Berman himself will be present for all three screenings on August 15, introducing the film and engaging in post-show discussions. It is an opportunity worth seizing; the chance to hear from the mind that orchestrated this sensory fugue will no doubt deepen one’s appreciation.
In the end, Resolution lives up to its title. It resolves tension into harmony, confusion into clarity, alienation into communion. It is, as its creators intend, an act of service: art deployed not to dazzle for its own sake, but to restore. That it does so with such visual bravura and musical vitality is a testament to the power of collaborative artistry.
As the lights came up in the Satosphere and the spell broke, I found myself glancing once more at the now-extinguished campfire on the dome’s ceiling. The embers glowed faintly, as if reluctant to die out entirely. Perhaps they hadn’t. Perhaps, like the film itself, they had simply taken root somewhere deeper—in the shared warmth between strangers, in the quiet hope carried out into the Montréal night.
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