While it borrows heavily from ethnographic modes of representation, the film is a biting commentary on the nature of modernity.
[a] The film shows the tourists driving hard bargains for local handcrafts such as woodcarvings and baskets, relentlessly taking photos of local people, handing out cigarettes, balloons, and perfume, viewing staged dance performances, and offering naive comments on native people living in harmony with nature.
At one point early in the film, a German tourist, clearly titillated, describes the bygone practice of raiding and cannibalism.
Thus the 'natives' display the rationale logic of modernity, while the Western tourists are guilty of the very irrational traits they attribute to the natives.
The climax of the film is when a group of tourists, faces painted in 'native fashion' by local men from one village (Tambunum), prance, dance, and assume a boxing stance to the music of Mozart.