David Bowie takes on the First Estate in the third The Next Day video, “written and conceived” by the man himself. 

The short is directed by Floria Sigismondi, responsible for the Tilda Swinton-starring ‘The Stars [Are Out Tonight]’, and features Gary Oldman as a lugubrious man of God and Marion Cotillard as a seductive temptress. On the cards? Stigmata, flagellation and Bowie scrubbing up like an extra from Lawrence Of Arabia. Oh, plus one of weirdest closing set-pieces we’ve seen in a while. If we were to pick some relevant words from Bowie’s work flow diagram, we’d plump for: Effegies, Violence, Succubus, and Comeuppance.

As Pitchfork note, Bowie and Oldman have history – they both appeared in 1996 film Basquiat. In related news, John Peel’s near-bottomless collection of David Bowie 7″s was recently uploaded to online repository The John Peel Archive – head here to browse.