Part of your issues with Lean's film is that you are looking at it from the perspective of 2010 and not 1962. Its a 48 year old film! For most of the 20th century nobody expected actors to actually LOOK like the people they were portraying. A little makeup and you're good to go. Thus we have white people playing Asians and Native Americans, and in this case Arabs. Having an actor of Guiness' caliber was much more important than his eye color (and of course today they could have turned his eyes brown with contacts but not then.) The same goes for the overture. You're watching the film on a dvd on your tv. This film was made to be shown in a HUGE theater (like the Michigan or bigger). It was meant to be a theatrical event. So just as musicals have overtures and entre'acts. So too does this movie. The score itself was an orchestral work of art. Imagine yourself going to the Fox Theater in Detroit, having had your hair done that day, dressed up with long gloves on. You had dinner at a nice restaurant and now you were going to see the film. THAT is the context in which it was meant to be shown, and the overture works perfectly there.

I saw the restored print when it debuted back in the late 80s at the Wang Center in Boston. It was an amazing experience.