Faith in humanity and epistemic confidence track together for most of the film — each new lie erodes both. But they split decisively at the ending. When the woodcutter is exposed as a thief, epistemic confidence collapses to near-zero and stays there: the audience will never know what happened in the forest. Faith in humanity crashes too, but the baby adoption pulls it back up. The audience leaves the film knowing NOTHING about the crime but feeling that compassion matters more than knowing.