Without dwelling too long it, it seems to me that everyone was lying in this movie. The professor pretended he was selfish and wanted the Nobel Prize. He never contradicted anyone who accused him of it. But what he really wanted was idealistic: to protect humanity. And he was willing to die to do it.
The Author said he had no conscience, no soul, but refused to subject the world to his inner demons and failings. That IS a conscience.
The Stalker acted distraught that no one believed, and one could be forgiven for thinking that he was a closet idealist, but in reality he himself showed he had no belief both by never going in the Room, and by–after demanding of the world that SOMEONE believe–refused to believe in his wife, after she offered to basically see him through all the way to his alleged dreams.
The wife lied when she said that she made the right decision. I forget exactly what she said, but it amounted to a repudiation of her torment writhing on the kitchen floor in the beginning. She lied to herself and the camera.
And the child WAS the miracle the Stalker claimed he wanted, claimed was the result of belief. And she was horribly lonely, rejected, and alone. She was unseen by all, unknown to all. They could only see their representations of belief, not the Light to which it led, and which had already been granted. (In Nostalghia, in a dream, a feminine voice says to God: show him a sign. God: I show him all the time, but he cannot see).
It’s funny reading literature or watching film and finding you need to interrogate the outer narrative. I felt like that, as I posted years ago, with The Great Gatsby. Nick’s opinion notwithstanding, Gatsby was a shit.