Have you ever seen the movie Brazil? There's a scene in there where one of the characters is in flight from the authorities, sowing chaos in a car chase, and you're totally rooting for him and his rebellion until this one moment where he looks out the back window at a checkpoint he's just blown up and you see this guy who is on fire.

It's not graphic - you don't see blood or burnt skin or anything - just this guy flailing around in pure panic. And the moment just punctures the "Fuck yeah, rebellion!" thing.

The underlying dynamics are quite different, but it connected to The Death of Stalin in my mind while I was watching, because you've got this same dynamic where the movie builds up toward something - and then undercuts itself - and leaves you with this haunting image. There turns out to be nothing redemptive in the violence.

For The Death of Stalin it's really made me want to see Iannucci's other work, because as you say there is that hard moral heart to it, and I feel like that's something lacking in a lot of political satire - a lot of politically themed works in general. There's a bedrock sense of what is actually valuable, which shines through the movie even though none of the Politburo guys have a damn clue, and I think without that art about politics ultimately becomes hollow.