Academy spreads message of hope with new video; Irrfan Khan stands out

As the world grapples with the coronavirus pandemic, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) has come up with a message of hope through a video that compiles popular movie scenes, including actor Irrfan Khan's famous last scene from "Life of Pi".

The video is a timely reminder of how people are connected to one another through stories.

The video, that the Academy posted on Wednesday on Twitter, features a compilation of small clips from films such as "Her", "Children of Men", "The Shawshank Redemption", "Captain Marvel", "The Martian", "Parasite", "Django Unchained", "Interstellar" and "Black Panther".

It starts with veteran actor Al Pacino's thundering speech from the "Scent of a Woman" in which he says, "There is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There's no prosthetic for that."

It is followed by a small bit from Peter Finch's outburst in 1976 feature "Network", where he says, "Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job... We don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone... Well, I'm not leaving you alone."

Matt Damon's end speech to students at NASA from Ridley Scott's "The Martian" is next in the line. He is seen as saying, "You can either accept that or you can get to work."

The conversation about hope in "Shawshank Redemption" plays after Damon's lines, with Tim Robbin's Andy Dufresne, saying, "Get busy living or get busy dying."

It's then followed by Harvey Dent's (Aaron Eckhart) popular dialogue from "The Dark Knight", "The night is darkest just before the dawn. And I promise you, the dawn is coming."

The video then features clips from Reese Witherspoon's "Legally Blonde", Russell Crowe's "The Gladiator", Greta Gerwig's "Little Women", Disney movie "Wall-E" and "Black Panther".

At one point, Sylvester Stallone's stirring speech plays out in which he says, "It's not about how hard you get hit. It's about how hard you get it and keep moving forward."

The video comes to an end with Irrfan's PiscineMolitorPatelor Pi's conversation with Rafe Spall's The Writer.

In the clip, The Writer asks Pi, "So, your story does have a happy ending", to which Irrfan's Pi gently smiles and replies, "Well, that's up to you."

Irrfan died in April last year from a rare form of cancer.