Much like it’s subject, Patti Smith: Dream of Life — a documentary about the legendary poet, singer and performance artist directed by Steven Sebring, now on view at the Film Forum — does not follow an expected path. Accompanying the singer and her friends and family through ten years of tours and travels, Sebring offers us a portrait that is as much a reflection of Smith’s personal aesthetic — her heroes, treasured objects and way of expressing herself — as it is an immersion in her unique energy. Take a bath in Patti Smith.

Beginning with a meditation on some of the people who have influenced her most (Robert Mapplethorpe, Bob Dylan, William S. Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, William Blake, her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith), the movie ambles along, Smith sometimes narrating directly to the camera, weaving in and out from the past to the present and back again. Visually, it’s almost painfully beautiful, shot in both black and white and color, lovingly and carefully capturing the smallest details that bring Smith’s humanity into focus: her hands on a guitar, the lines on her skin, her slightly crooked teeth close up as she laughs. The film shows her to be gorgeous but never pretty, pretentious and supremely humble, dorky, innocent, tenderhearted and fierce.

Patti Smith is a person who has been touched by loss, and grown stronger. When she talks about Robert Mapplethorpe, showing off his remains with something like pride, and the joy she feels when she thinks of her late brother and husband, it’s clear that she’s been able to transform the energy of grief. This grace translates to everything she does. She is more poet than rocker, more political performance artist than just singer, a little bit shaman and a little bit provocateur. She incites people to wake up, appreciate the moment, “rise up and take the streets.”

“We all have a voice,” she says, “and we have the responsibility to use it.”