An old thread revisited: Omelet wrote in response to my comments on The Man Who Wasn't There:

Have you watched any film noir/potboilers/gumshoe pulp fiction? I wondered why they chose to emulate it so closely. Do you see any layer of irony or other meaning that distinguishes imitation from innovation of the genre, or is that part of what makes it "fall flat" for you?

Haven't seen much film noir, especially from the era the Coens were recreating. The only ones that can recall are The Maltese Falcon and Welles' Touch of Evil. And yet...

Guess the Coens emulated 50s noir so closely because that's what they do, they are movie geeks who get their kicks from wearing their influences on their sleeves. Still, from those loopy moments where they add alien paranoia and that nifty Earth vs. the Flying Saucers-like UFO, it's obvious they also like to mix-and-match those same influences.

Have read that noir was not really about solving the whodunit, but about exploring how evil seeped into every layer of society and even into the heroes themselves. If true, guess the Coens innovated by using noir instead for an existential story, where the hero wonders about his purpose in life, his own nature. But not even he can offer any insight into it, he just admits he has no answers himself, and that's what was so disappointing to me, that's the "joke that fell flat on its butt."

Had to think for awhile about what the movie was lacking, and can only find it by looking at Camus' The Stranger, where similar questions arise. The issue there is whether the protagonist is incapable of empathy towards other people. Indeed he is, which leads him to murder and by the end leaves him one day away from his execution. He realizes he had been sleepwalking through life and now he's going to lose it, and he crumbles down.