Particle Fever | Review

Supersymmetry Vs. Multiverse: Levinson’s Doc A Non-Experiment

Over three decades ago, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) began it’s initial steps toward constructing the world’s largest and most powerful particle collider beneath the earth through a seventeen mile circular tunnel that crosses the French and Swiss borders. The massive construct would allow physicists to test long contemplated theories of particle physics, potentially unlocking the mysteries of our seemingly miraculous existence. In 2008, with the collaboration of thousands of scientists and engineers from hundreds of countries around the globe, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) was finally completed. Adding in the involvement of six of the passionate and kooky physicists directly involved with the project or patiently awaiting the results of the first particle collision experiments, this is where Mark Levinson’s entertaining, yet dryly verbose Particle Fever begins.

Having completed a doctorate in particle physics from Berkeley long before he became a filmmaker, Levinson must have been just as excited about working on the LHC as the scientists he tailed for the last six years. Just prior to the facility’s completion, he began to follow a sextet of leading physicists, half theorists – David Kaplan, Savas Dimopoulos, Nima Arkani-Hamed – half experimentalists – Fabiola Gianotti, Martin Aleksa, Monica Dunford. Much to do is made over the contentions between these counterbalancing groups, as one can not exist without the other, one is intangibly heady guesswork capable of explaining the universe, while the other is physical tinkering, proving or disproving the others’ theories. Together, they hope to prove the existence of the famed, but illusive Higgs boson, which would complete what is known as the Standard Model. Being that particle physics is an incredibly dense, complicated matter needing a basic yet still complex understanding to even have a base level conversation on the topic, this is where the film begins to feel like it’s missing it’s own necessary particles. With repeated iteration, lovingly animated charts and analogous representations, Levinson does his best to condense volumes of studies into compartmentalized cartoons, but there is only so much one can glean in this fashion. Understanding this issue, he smartly relies on the eccentricities of his subjects to allure.

Being that these scientists are not centrally located, occasionally they document their own activities to camera, divulging their hopes, dreams and expectations of the monumental experiments, mixing up the feel and flow of the film with a variety of questions about how people perceive physics in general, what it means for the world if their theories about Supersymmetry are correct and what it means for them personally if they are wrong. It brings up an interesting parallel between a single human being and the particles they are studying, wholly insignificant and simultaneously all important.

What’s most frustrating is that Levinson seems to have infused Particle Fever with a scientific allegiance to the theories of supersymmetry, choosing not to feature any theorists banking on the concept of chaos and multiverses. The pretty diagrams are nice and all, but we’re quiet curious about the flip side of the coin. Maybe, like the other’s he’s chosen to follow within, he’s afraid there is nothing left for humans to learn from physics within our own tiny little universe. Either way, his film makes us feel both insignificant in the face of the expanse of existence and awe for our fellow humans’ incredible accomplishments in figuring out our role in it all.