When we think of humility in fiction film (if we think of it at all), we might imagine quiet and unassuming characters or religious figures, often in the background or as sage advisers to the bolder lead characters. In contrast, the genre of biographical film, or for short the biopic, focusses by its very nature on the lives of outstanding, mostly secular, historical individuals.¹ Moreover, mainstream cinema’s inclination to focus on individual heroism and acts of greatness, seems to leave little scope for a display of humility. How then can a biopic about one of the most iconic figures in history – Neil Armstrong, the first man to walk on the moon – be also a film about humility? Using contemporary philosophical accounts of the virtue of humility as a conceptual framework for my analysis of First Man (Damien Chazelle, 2018), I will argue that, through both the portrayal of its protagonist and its overall aesthetic, the film exemplifies an idea of humility that reconciles achievement, ambition and greatness with a recognition of sacrifice, serendipity and sometimes the futility of human endeavours. I do not mean to imply that the director necessarily intended to make a film explicitly about humility or that there are no other lenses through which the film can be read. Rather than using the virtue of humility to explain the film, the film is employed as an exemplar of how humility might be presented on screen, which demonstrates, by extension, how films can assist us in working through philosophical ideas of virtue.

中文翻译：

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Damien Chazelle 的第一个人中的谦逊和伟大

当我们想到小说电影中的谦逊时（如果我们真的想到的话），我们可能会想象安静和谦逊的人物或宗教人物，通常在背景中或作为更大胆的主角的圣人顾问。相比之下，传记电影的类型，或简称传记片，就其本质而言，侧重于杰出的，主要是世俗的历史人物的生活。¹此外，主流电影倾向于关注个人英雄主义和伟大行为，似乎没有多少展示谦逊的空间。那么，一部关于历史上最具标志性人物之一——尼尔·阿姆斯特朗，第一个在月球上行走的人——的传记片怎么能同时成为一部关于谦逊的电影呢？使用当代关于谦逊美德的哲学解释作为我分析的概念框架第一人（Damien Chazelle，2018 年），我认为，通过对主角的刻画和整体美学，这部电影体现了一种谦逊的理念，将成就、野心和伟大与对牺牲、偶然性，有时甚至是人类努力的徒劳。我并不是要暗示导演一定打算明确地制作一部关于谦逊的电影，或者没有其他镜头可以阅读这部电影。这部电影不是用谦逊的美德来解释这部电影，而是被用作如何在银幕上呈现谦逊的典范，这进一步证明了电影如何帮助我们理解美德的哲学思想。