‘The problem of the 20th century is the problem of the colour-line.” So wrote the Afro-American activist WEB Du Bois in his famous 1903 work, The Souls of Black Folk. And indeed, the century of which he spoke was dominated by issues of race, decolonisation and civil rights – the last especially so in the US.

One of the most forceful figures of the Civil Rights Movement was Malcolm X – a man who rose from criminality and prison to become one of the most eloquent and captivating orators of the modern era. And one of the greatest tributes to the man is Spike Lee’s 1992 film Malcolm X, featuring a performance by Denzel Washington, which film director Martin Scorsese lauded as “(…) one of the best in American movies.”

For Lee, The Autobiography of Malcolm X was the most important book that he had ever read, and a film about Malcolm was something that he thought he was born to do. Subsequently, despite having hitherto made relatively small films, he sought to make Malcolm X comparable in scope to David Lean epics such as The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) and Lawrence of Arabia (1962). In this he succeeded: shot on three continents and with a running time of well over three hours, the film ranges from Malcolm’s childhood in the ’20s to his assassination in the ’60s, while commenting on the problems of race in the ’90s.

The opening title sequence at once sets a provocative tone — as Malcolm is heard castigating the white race for its crimes, we see an American flag going up in flames, intercut with real footage from the infamous 1991 videotape of black taxi driver Rodney King being severely beaten by several white police officers. Once the flag has been burned down to the shape of an “X”, the film proper begins with young Malcolm getting his hair straightened so that it “looks white”, moving on to him cheerily bouncing down the street in a flamboyant zoot suit.

Lee and his crew did extensive research for this film, examining documents and letters by and about Malcolm, in addition to interviewing those who knew him. But like other biographical or historical films, Malcolm X changes, omits from, and adds to the historical record. Such alterations are understandable, given the difficulty in attempting to portray in just a few hours a life – especially a life containing the varied hues of Malcolm’s.

But it is important to note the film’s limitations. For instance, the film shows a prison inmate urging Malcolm to embrace the Nation of Islam, but it was members of Malcolm’s own family who advised him to do so. Malcolm’s siblings only appear in the film as children in flashback sequences – their roles as adults in his life are not shown at all.

The NOI is also treated in a simplified manner. While imprisoned, Malcolm underwent a religious experience and had a vision of WD Fard (also known as Wallace Fard Muhammad), the mysterious founder of the NOI. But the film shows Malcolm encountering Elijah Muhammad in his vision, not Fard. More importantly, the film focuses on the political and racial components of Elijah Muhammad’s message while ignoring the more outlandish claims of the NOI leader.

The focus of the film is, of course, on Malcolm, but Malcolm himself was also prone to making questionable assertions, ranging from claims that Jesus spoke Arabic, to the proclamation that an airplane crash was God’s retribution for the death of a Black Muslim some days earlier.

Lee’s film might not interrogate Malcolm as much as the latter’s critics would like, but neither is it hagiographic. The material by and about Malcolm is vast, and Lee could not possibly include it all. Lee deserves respect for humanising Malcolm while simultaneously tackling controversial matter in the face of hostility. During shooting, someone aimed a car at the set with a brick tied to its accelerator (no one was injured). The director was cautioned not to show Malcolm sleeping with a white woman, and not to show him taking drugs.

But Lee ignored these warnings; his film spends more than an hour on this period of Malcolm’s life, and also delves into his second conversion to orthodox Islam. As a consequence, it excels at showing the man’s evolution, and paints large the triumphant and tragic themes of Malcolm’s life. While some telling details may be missing from the film, one of the greatest lessons and legacies of Malcolm is given substantial focus — his embodiment of the power of human beings to improve themselves and to transcend their origins and circumstances.

It is difficult to think of a film which comes even close to Malcolm X in its unhindered portrayal of the problems of the colour-line. “Cry Freedom and Amistad are not about the black people,” Lee observed in a documentary that accompanied the film’s DVD release. “They end up being about the white people.”

Indeed, there are no white saviours in Lee’s film, and it would perhaps be more productive to compare Malcolm X to an equally controversial work released a year before — Oliver Stone’s JFK. Both films were over three hours in length, and both used the stylistic devices of archival footage and multiple film stocks to challenge and discuss 20th century American politics and history. In fact, JFK was an influence on Malcolm X, and even some footage from the former appears in the latter.

In a 1992 article for The Los Angeles Times, Lee was quoted on the need for young black men to have more diverse role models than athletes and rap artists. In a book he co-wrote with Ralph Wiley on the making of Malcolm X titled By Any Means Necessary (Hyperion, 1992), he went further and criticised the fashion among many black youths to fail classes, hang out and get high, because the opposite was seen as “acting white”.

Lee blamed this championing of ignorance over intelligence on peer pressure. West attributed the mediocrity of black intellectuals to a more easily accessible mass culture, with its concomitant side-effects of conspicuous consumption and hedonistic indulgence. This same mass culture is also responsible for the commodification and simplification of Malcolm: the selective way in which his image and words have been interpreted. Malcolm’s pride and anger are easily packaged, marketed and imitated – but his attributes of self-correction and asceticism are not.

When Malcolm X was released, the Rodney King riots were just months past, and South African apartheid still in the process of being dismantled. Yet the film is as relevant today as it ever was, and has lost none of its salutary power, for racism and injustice are not at an end, neither in the US nor anywhere else. There are still people in many different countries who, like Malcolm in his youth, think it preferable to be light-complexioned and who, sometimes unbeknownst to themselves, strive to be white, both physically and culturally. Of course, one could argue that a trans-racial attitude towards life and culture is a most enlightened outlook, but this ideally comes after a philosophical acknowledgement and acceptance of one’s origins.

To study the life of the philosopher and revolutionary Malcolm X is to help one to reach this goal. And one could do worse than begin with Lee’s film, which, despite its flaws, is as inspiring and challenging as its subject. As Lee himself described it, “This is not just some regular bullshit Hollywood movie.”