Jeen-Yuhs Review

Clarence Simmons, known as Coodie, was a Chicago comedian with a local show he had co-founded, Channel Zero, when he started filming a young producer called Kanye West in 1998, and he moved to New York to keep filming. With his directing partner Chike Ozah he shaped two decades of that footage into three long acts, narrated by Coodie in the first person, as a friend rather than a journalist.

Vision, the first act, is extraordinary. Kanye walks desk to desk through the Roc-A-Fella offices rapping at employees who keep typing, and ends up playing All Falls Down to an assistant who barely looks up. Purpose covers the car crash, the jaw wired shut, Through the Wire, whose video Coodie and Chike directed, and the making of The College Dropout. Both acts belong as much to his mother, Donda West, whose warmth and certainty are the film's heart.

Awakening cannot keep that intimacy. As Kanye's fame grew, Coodie's access shrank, and the last act races through fifteen years, leaning on footage the world had already seen, to reach the 2020 campaign and the moments when Coodie chooses to put the camera down. Kanye demanded final edit before release and did not get it, which is why this remains Coodie's film rather than a Kanye product.