Dream of Life holds the potential to either lure in or completely isolate viewers, but then, so does Patti Smith. The woman who reveals that she’d idolized Maria Callas and June Christy as a girl, who’d never planned on being a rock ’n’ roll singer, also uncovers (over the course of more than a decade) that her personality carries as many facets as her train of musical interests.

There’s not much footage here of Smith on stage, but those small doses show a performer of fire, tearing up at her own poetry reading, shouting out to George W. Bush, creating chaos in her mid-50s with a voice that’s perhaps more biting than ever.

But then we see Smith gushing over Bob Dylan, and we see her gently singing to her kitty, complimenting her parents’ humble backyard and delicately handling her share of Robert Mapplethorpe’s remains, which she stores in a small urn and likens to bits of shell, and we realize that perhaps she’s a softer, happier person than the carrier of that rock icon status which she deems embarrassing.

The well-edited trailer included on this DVD shows us Smith the Icon, dry humor and smart stage presence. It only hints at the cliché but beautiful cinematography of Steven Sebring that comes with the full documentary (16mm black and white shots to “contemplative poet” beach dances).

Within the doc itself, we’ve got young Patti Smith spouting off a prayer for New York and showing how much spirit she’s got for the city, a moment that makes apparent our lack of an icon in the present. But she’s as much a singer as an icon, and when she dishes some contrived anecdote about CBGB at some point during her overall flat, scripted narrative, you can’t help but wish for her silence, if only so you could hear the rowdy, live version of “Gloria” that’s playing in the background.

Grade: B

Dream of Life is currently available.