As the years pass and the scientists enjoy progress and
setbacks—they celebrate too early after successfully
shooting the first beam of protons in one direction, for
example—Levinson faces the challenge of making the
less-cinematic elements of their work visually compelling.
"Particle Fever" features a lot of brilliant people siting
around talking to each other at a conference table, or
writing lengthy equations on blackboards, or scribbling
away furiously in notepads. It can be quite dry at times.
But getting to know the people behind the science allows
us to admire them for their perseverance and connect
with them as humans. Kaplan's mentor at Stanford
University, the brilliant Savas Dimopoulos, recalls fleeing
his childhood home of Turkey with his Greek family
because of ethnic tensions. Fabiola Gianotti, the head
of one of the main teams seeking the Higgs, is also an
accomplished pianist.
Levinson is a physicist-turned-filmmaker himself, so it's
clear that he wanted the science to be tangible and
authentic. At the same time, he's wisely chosen figures
to follow from among the 10,000 people involved from
over 100 nationalities who can bring this highly specific
work to life for the layperson. They include producer/
Johns Hopkins University professor David Kaplan, a
theoretical physicist who's loose and chatty as he
describes what this discovery would mean to the world:
"It's gonna change everything," he says in understated
hyperbole.
Post-doctorate scholar Monica Dunford is the one who
consistently explains this complicated process in smart
but easy-to-understand terms. She compares the control
room during these experiments to a room full of 6-year-
olds whose birthday is next week.
She also explains the study itself very well: At CERN,
the European Organization for Nuclear Research in
Switzerland, scientists and engineers several years
ago created the behemoth Large Hadron Collider, an
underground, 17-mile ringed tunnel which is the biggest
machine humans have ever built. There, they will send
beams of protons on a collision course with each other
at ridiculously high speeds in hopes of recreating the
conditions that existed just after The Big Bang.
The hope is that among all the stuff that explodes from
that collision will be the storied Higgs boson particle,
which potentially could explain the universe as we know
it. No pressure.
And as all these researchers inch closer to the discovery
they hope to make, they find themselves falling into
one of two categories, with mind-boggling notions
about whether our universe has tidy, parallel others out
there, or whether ours is merely a speck or a pocket of
a multiverse where chaos reigns. If the latter is true, as
Kaplan posits, "In a sense, it's the end of physics."
Heady stuff, indeed. But "Particle Fever" also works on
a purely visual, visceral level. It's shot beautifully, with
crisp, vibrant footage of not just the collider itself—
which resembles a buzzing, whirring, seven-story
stained glass window—but also of the striking landscape
surrounding the lab. The snow-covered French Alps
against a baby-blue sky are especially spectacular. The
film also movies with a great fluidity, the work of veteran
editor (and frequent Francis Ford Coppola collaborator)
Walter Murch, a two-time Academy Award winner for
"Apocalypse Now" and "The English Patient."
If you follow the news, you know how this multibillion-
dollar adventure ends. But that doesn't detract from
the power of that moment, or the infinite, dizzying
possibilities that await.
Read more at: https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/
particle-fever-2014
THE CLAPPER 2018 - 2019
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