The experimental physicists deployed on the Hadron work in the service of ideas formulated by their theorist brethren (shown in their Princeton and Palo Alto habitats, walking in the woods or writing on whiteboards). There are hints of collegial rivalry between the groups, and of competition among the theorists. Much of the background is explained by David E. Kaplan, a Johns Hopkins physicist who is a producer of the film. Mr. Kaplan helped commission Mr. Levinson (and also Walter Murch, the visionary editor of “Apocalypse Now” and “The English Patient”) to translate science into cinema, and he proves an able and amiable guide.

The physics that Mr. Kaplan and his colleagues practice is forbiddingly complex, comprehensible to most of the people in the film and to very few outside it. But his impromptu lectures and some nicely animated graphics make the basic issues reasonably clear, and delightfully dramatic. While the discovery of the Higgs may not have immediate consequences for the way we live, or applications in the world of technology and industry, its implications, according to “Particle Fever,” could hardly be more profound. Through most of the film, the scientists are awaiting a specific bit of data, a single number that will either vindicate a theory of the universe known as supersymmetry or suggest the possibility of multiple universes.

The differences between these two outcomes seem very stark. In the first case, more particles are likely to be found, contributing to a detailed and orderly picture of the nature of things. In the second, the Standard Model will be thrown into chaos, and the stability of the universe itself may be called into question. It won’t be the end of the world, but for some theorists, it will feel that way.

Mr. Kaplan is hoping for supersymmetry. His friend and sometime table tennis partner, Nima Arkani-Hamed of the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, is in the multiverse camp.

“Particle Fever” is a fascinating movie about science, and an exciting, revealing and sometimes poignant movie about scientists. The Large Hadron Collider, after all, is a human endeavor, and the people who have devoted their lives to chasing the Higgs are a compelling and diverse collection of characters.