Book-based films

Yesterday I finally went to see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. I read the novel (in Dutch) when I was around 12 and re-read it again a couple of months ago (in English) and loved it both times. The second reading was done with the upcoming film in mind, already thinking about what they would leave out, and change, and how much I would hate them for it. Turns out, they didn't leave anything out. Even more, they added stuff.
Now I won't write a review of the film here, as I think everybody who is remotely interested will have seen it (or go to see it) and form an opinion on their own, and those who are not interested won't be interested in my opinion one way or another (I have a colleague who openly admits to "never having gotten through the first Lord of the Rings movie" and "not liking Harry Potter all that much either"). I want to talk about films based on books.
There seem to be a lot of those around lately. The Hobbit being the main example, but the glorious, lovely, you-should-read-this-if-you-only-read-one-other-book-in-your-whole-life Life of Pi has also been put to film ("that would be the LAST film I'd ever watch", my non-fantasy reading/watching colleague said), and then there is Cloud Atlas, considered equally unfilmable but still to be found in a cinema near you (I'm currently reading the novel) and of course Anna Karenina (why oh why Keira Knightley insists upon working with Joe Wright and only Joe Wright is beyond me). Not sure why we're getting so many book-based films, maybe the studios are getting a bit anxious where they put their money, so they're only betting on stories that have already sold themselves? The Dutch film industry appears to be focusing on 'deciding moments in Dutch history' (with the Willem Barentz' journey to Nova Zembla, the 1953 storm, and now the bombardment of Rotterdam) or sappy love stories all revolving around one of the few internationally famous actresses we have, and otherwise there are a lot of action movies (James Bond (technically also book-based), and Tom Cruise appears to be doing some running around again), and strangely enough very few thrillers or comedies around. Not sure if this is always the case around Christmas, must be, as we're all longing for nice fantasy (that includes romantic) stories that end well, or high-action movies that end well (don't they all).
Anyway, with book-based films, you can mess it up so badly I'm surprised at how many good examples there are. Firstly, you can stick too close to the book. The first Harry Potter movies did this, and they sadly collapsed under their own weight. Then you can get too far away from the book, changing important plot elements or characters and just making it too weird. Like the Lord of the Rings film that had the eagles fly Frodo to Mount Doom and just drop the ring in. Kind of missing the story. Then you can 'interpret' the novel in a new way, which might shed a new light on the story but usually leaves your viewer quite baffled, like the Joe Wright Anna Karenina version set entirely in a theatre (I haven't seen it, I don't intend to, but I've heard enough about it).
Somehow, you need to keep the essence of the story, the characters, the atmosphere, and then make it work in another medium. I think Atonement is a good example, as they changed some important bits (the whole final part of the novel has been changed from a first-person narrator description to a television interview) but still staid true to the story. And then they added some bits, like the colours that show each character's personality, and the beautiful soundtrack, which makes the story work even better. And you can still go back to the novel, and read that and enjoy that, and it can exist side by side with the film without either one being better; they're just two different interpretations of the same story. I think Peter Jackson did the same with his Lord of the Rings films, and again with The Hobbit. The main issue here is that the viewers have already seen what comes next, so the creeping shadows and darkness that you can't read in The Hobbit (which is, after all, a children's book) have to be superimposed upon the story. But the humour is kept, and the characters are the same, and the story too, roughly, it just all plays out on a bigger canvas. And you can still go back and read The Hobbit and marvel on the bits that Tolkien stretched out over pages and pages while they don't really matter and find that the main climactic battle is over in a couple of pages and still enjoy and love it in it's own right, and then watch the movie and see the whole visual interpretation of it without either one 'spoiling' the other.
I'm so very much hoping that they did the same with Life of Pi, which is a very philosophical novel with an essence that is hard to find, and a story that might not work so well visually, as it takes place mostly inside the head of the main character. But still, I think it can be done. And the reviews are good, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed.
Only once have I encountered a film that I thought was better than the novel, and in that case I'd watched the film first and read the novel later. It was a Dutch film, Phileine zegt sorry, based on the novel by Ronald Giphart. In the film, several separate characters from the novel were combined, several disjointed events were connected and relocated, and the many separate climax scenes were also combined, making the 'life lesson' that the main character goes through much more distinct. Sadly, the book was just a big boring drag after watching the film. Not sure if I would have liked the novel better if I'd read it before watching the movie, but just to be sure, I'm now sticking to 'source material first'. Which is why I'm reading Cloud Atlas at the moment, so I can watch the film with what it's based on in the back of my mind. A bit of a puritan approach, but hey, book-based films just are in a place of their own.