*SPOILER*: good 'film', BUT why make pointless and unnecessary changes to the book?

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2001)

I loved the book, and saw the film on the same day that I finished it, which perhaps was not the best time to have given it a fair viewing.
I have read the first 20 reviews that loaded on the top page of the IMDB's comments board for this film, and most of them seemed overwhelmingly positive. Normally I wouldn't bother other people with my own paltry views on these matters, but since only one other person even touched upon what I found most distressing in the film, here goes...
Why make pointless and unnecessary changes to the book? I was expecting, of course, that cuts, and even perhaps changes, would have to be made. [If truth be told, I am not at all sure of the success of the writer's idea at the end of the book of introducing several new characters in such a short space of time, and zipping through so much of the other characters' histories in the last handful of pages; but that's a different matter.]
I simply don't understand why the following changes to the book were made, aside from which, I thought the film was very good in many ways, and successfully captured the atmosphere that had been conjured for me in the book of the island and its people. The casting I found very accurate, and the acting ranging from the perfectly acceptable to the magnificent. These are just some of the anomalies that bothered me in the film:

Mandras becoming an unselfish hero in the face of his spurned love, instead of the outcast killer, political troublemaker and rapist that he became in the book, eventually ignobly committing suicide [never an action, in my opinion, capable of inducing sympathy]. In the film, it is not only Mandras who discovers Corelli dying in the dark after the German treachery, and brings him to the doctor, it is Mandras who arranges his flight from the island. Admittedly this was done partly because of the excision of the British agent who effected the escape in the book, but I see no need for Mandras to have been turned into such a hero in the film.

The suggestion, if not statement, [it's not clear whether she is fantasising or remembering] that Pelagia and Corelli made love. It is central to the book that she remained a virgin all her long life, and the she and Corelli never consummated their love, admirably exercising restraint that is all too often absent in films these days. It seemed a very low cheap Hollywood trick indeed to introduce the sex element so gratuitously into this film.

The fight scenes seemed woefully out of place in what was otherwise a 'peaceful' film about the war, and gratuitously inserted for the gratification of the action brigade film-goer.

The quiet excision of the homosexuality of Carlo, which means that his subsequent saving of Corelli's life is almost nonsensical. [The excision of the campaign in Albania means that Carlo's character would become much harder to expand, but nevertheless, it could easily have been possible.]

The excision of the great fat priest's character, who undergoes a change in the book charting in many ways the other changes taking place during the story.

Great comic potential was lost in the film's treatment of the explosion on the beach. Likewise the search for snails, and also the excision of the pine marten.

The execution of Mandras's mother [who ought to have looked far uglier].

The hanging of the Greek girl in whom Gunter had expressed an interest at the dance.

The survival of the doctor in the earthquake, which mysteriously takes place six years earlier in the film than in the book. [I haven't researched it, but I wonder in what year, if any, the island suffered such an earthquake, and why it would need to be changed for minimal dramatic impact?]

After producing what he must have known was such a wonderful book, I wonder how de Bernieres could have signed away the rights to the script, as he apparently did? The Germans were very clearly the bad guys in this production, with the Italians seeming innocent and playful for the most part. Even Gunter seemed merely weak and cowardly in not at least affording his old friend a swift and painless death as he lay crushed and bleeding to death in the sweltering sun; he had been a much more sympathetic character in the book.
I'd recommend the film, as a film distinct from the book, well-shot and decently acted; but for anyone with an ounce of imagination or interest in finding out more about this subject, PLEASE make sure you read the book first, so that you may carry with you the beautiful and poignant images of the book, so sadly missing from the film.