Warning: This movie may cause one to make bold statements.

Statement One: The Rolling Stones in 1969, with “Beggar’s Banquet” and “Let It Bleed” under their belts, and “Sticky Fingers” and “Exile on Main St.” gestating, were the greatest band in history.

Not the best band at the time. Not the best the Rolling Stones ever were. The best band in history. You deny it? I’ll meet you out back.

Statement Two: The cinema verite style is immeasurably more moving when the film is from a time before 24 hour news and the use of video.

The images, specifically of musicians or artists in a pre-Access Hollywood universe, were all we had to go on, and therefore more meaningful.

Statement Three: Gimme Shelter is the perfect marriage of form and content, on a subject about the importance of form and content. It is therefore a masterpiece for the ages, a once-in-a-lifetime treasure that will never be duplicated in this or any other life time.

Now that that’s out of the way, here’s the real news: this movie fuckin’ rocks.

On tour with the Stones in ’69, first blowing away Madison Square Garden, the camera is glued to Mick on stage. He is creating the arena rock presence that has not died. He is an artist, a matador, an idiot, a poet-warrior. He wears an Uncle Sam hat and a scarf, he wears a pimp’s hat and shades. He looks at himself on a Steenbeck weeks later and says, “Well all right.”

The story, briefly, is about the disaster of the free concert at Altamont. The planning stages, the chaos, the fighting, the death, the fallout. We know the fallout. Everyone says it’s where the 60s ended. They choked on their own hubris. The filmmakers make their case plain: waking up the next morning the flower children hobble home in the dawn light blinking as if coming out of a horrible drunk. Just what did I do last night? Only last night was five years and a spit in the face of society.

We see the silver coiffed lawyer behind his giant desk festooned with roses and a granddaughter’s picture. “There may be 20,000 kids driving there right now!” his worried aide reminds him. He’s got to find them a place to pee.

Somehow the Hell’s Angels, years before The Road Warrior would be released, show up to act as interim cops. It’s the “do as you feel” festival of sorts, so no one says no. The cameras watch as the show unfolds. Unlike Woodstock’s hazy split screen, our eyes stay focused. Deterioration. Decay. Hubris? Too much beer and idiots!

There’s music, too. “Love in Vain” as a stoned-slow anthem. Dazzling in frozen red light. The rhythm section of Richard-Watts-Wyman is unmatched. Wyman’s bass will pound through you. As a friend said, “Bill Wyman was in my throat, I felt like a 13-year-old schoolgirl.”

The 30th anniversary re-release, the one that I saw twice this week, offers no new footage, only a remixed soundtrack. But with time, of course, it’s offered a new perspective.