U2 has a new film opening. It is a 3D take on them in concert. It was… stupendous. The film can only be seen on IMAX screens so right off the bat it is 60 feet tall. To make it just a bit better, however, it utilizes a new digital 3-D technology that still requires you to don glasses but offers a spectacular picture.I spent the first 15 minutes of the film just laughing with delight at the picture. The overhead shots of Larry Mullen, Jr. playing drums and the dead on shots of the Edge strumming and Adam Clayton pounding the bass were nothing short of dazzling. Bono is, of course, front and center – and very 3-D – but the film captures, maybe for the first time, the band. Listening to them and seeing them in concert is to be blown away by Bono’s vocals and the Edge’s guitar. It is to hear Adam’s driving bass and Larry’s responsive drumming. But what the film captured was U2’s cohesiveness. There are Adam’s little dance steps that seem aimed at cracking up the band. There are the mouthed words one man to another. There is the obvious and beautiful affection they have onstage. It is an intimate portrait of four men living as one organism called U2. On the way out I ran into a glowing friend who beamed, “Every U2 concert is a revival.”She’s not too far off. I headed out to the theater tonight because I was tired and the stuff of this world felt a bit to much to handle and I needed to be given a glimpse of the eternal. Wonderfully, that is what I got. I got to see a band that is, at the very least, a rich shadow of the musical perfection to come when things on earth things in heaven are one. I feel revived.