If you don’t keep up with music news, then you might not have realized that last year was a pretty big deal for Lady Gaga.

The infamous singer, known for her elaborate costumes, makeup, songs, and persona, with her army of “little monsters,” underwent a huge brand change in 2016. She performed her nominated song at the Oscars (“Till It Happens To You”), won a Golden Globe for her role in American Horror Story, released her new soft rock/pop country album “Joanne” and played the Super Bowl halftime show this year. And this whole time, she’s apparently been being filmed by a documentary crew.

Right off the bat, it’s easy to write off Netflix and Chris Moukarbel’s Gaga: Five Foot Two (referring to her height) as a nice promotional piece. It is that, to some degree. I don’t personally know enough about Lady Gaga to say how die-hard fans will feel about the image she portrays here. We’ll never know how much of the footage was edited or left out. But what I saw, as someone who just had a public-mass view of Lady Gaga, was different from what I thought I knew about Lady Gaga. Suddenly, it’s not as easy to write off this film.

It is rare to see anyone, particularly a star, be able to show how complicated a person can be. Stefani Germanotta can be Lady Gaga. She can wear the meat dress and the white tee and shorts. She can be hunched over in excruciating pain and still incorporate it into a dance. She can be in a room of people and still seem alone. She can celebrate the LGBTQ community and be a part of a tight-knit Catholic family and love and be loved by them. We are walking contradictions in our own lives, but it seems unnatural to expect that from celebrities, who have to market a personal brand. It’s almost uncomfortable to see them demonstrate that they are like the rest of us, not because they mess up sometimes or are “super relatable,” but because they have as many contradictions and layers in their lives as we do. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that expressed as well as it was here.

The doc works because we have such an ingrained sense of who Lady Gaga is, we don’t have to see her “do” that persona. We see her behind-the-scenes personality, then contrast it with our own, and realize the complexity behind that.

And, helping us along the way as we try to figure out who this woman really is, is Gaga herself. She has moments of startling clarity and reflection. She talks about how her insecurities have kept her hiding behind the stage makeup and costumes and elaborate stunts. But in the same scene she gushes over her love of fashion and how she’s trying to find that balance between the high glamour she loves and the more natural image she’s trying to reveal. She voices the anxieties of women in the workplace, how the industry tried to change her, how she tried to rebel against it, and how she knows she’s more privileged than most and how her money helps her cope with her medical problems. She’s thoughtful, and she can say it while shirtless in one scene and backstage smoking in another. She’s many things at once, like we all are.

If you aren’t interested in music pop culture or don’t have any tolerance for celebrity gossip, then this might not be your film, no matter how good it is. But if you are interested in any of that stuff, even just a little, then this is well worth your time. This star-doc is well-directed and put together, but is different from others of its kind.

What makes Gaga: Five Foot Two different is Gaga herself. She has the entire doc on her shoulders, and as she proves, she can carry the whole show.

-Madeleine D