Murnau would live to see this film to completion, but he would die before its release. It makes sense that he would die. With making Tabu, Murnau would act in complete defiance of God. Murnau gives us a brief vision of paradise, and then proceeds to destroy it.

At the beginning, we see a group of young Tahitians fishing. Here, already in the films first shot, Murnau equates the documentary with the legendary and the epic, in typical Germanic fashion. Mahati spears fish in a heroic pose as waves crash at his feet. In the meantime his compatriots cheer him on. They then go to mingle with Tahiti’s female population, and have a hell of alot of fun doing it. Murnau shows us paradise, a man for a woman, a woman for a man.

Later we meet Hitu. He brings a message. Reri, the woman that Mahati has been courting, has been chosen by the gods as a sacred maiden from the island. “Man must not touch her nor cast upon her the eye of desire.” Hitu must bring Reri to his people, or answer with his life. There is then a great celebration and the sorrowful Reri is called upon to dance. In the meantime, the downtrodden Mahati sulks at his deep misfortune. A small child happens upon him, and consoles him. Extrodinarily human moments like this, as well as the naturalism of the actors, prevent the film from falling into the theatricality that stems from German Expressionism. Instead, we get what John Ford called a “grace note.”

Soon, Mahati, reinvigorated by the child returns to the where the dance takes place. He elbows out the other men dancing with Reri, and Reri’s eyes suddenly brighten. As Hitu watches, dance suddenly becomes an act of defiance, an act of sexuality, an act of love. Hitu angrily calls the dance to an end and takes her abord his ship. That night, Mahati will steal out to the ship, and take Reri away in his canoe.

Then a title, one of the few in the film, appears before us: Paradise Lost.

They escape to a distant island, one far more westernized, but is that also to their misfortune? They dare to escape one society in favour for another one. Through their pure, “primative” nature, they know not the meaning nor value of money. Therefore, others are ready to take advantage of them. Mahati becomes known for his diving expertise and finds a great pearl one day. As the work is play to him, Mahati will join in the celebration, and the happy crowd eats, drinks and dances. A man, Kong Ah, asks Mahati to sign multiple sheets of paper. Mahati does so gladly. Little does he realize that the papers are the bills for the bottles of champagne the crowd is drinking and the food that they are eating.

One night, as Mahati sleeps, Reri sees Hitu outside their hut. He leaves her a message that says in three days, if Reri has not left with Hitu, he will kill Mahati. After she has read the message, she buries it deep withing the ground, to erase the thought, to bury the very notion that her love could die. Meanwhile a full moon is out, Murnau’s great harbringer of doom.

The next day Reri, terrified, goes to the shipping agency – she finds out that the next ship leaves in three days. Her and Mahati pool together their savings and Mahati goes to book passage. As he hands money to the clerk, Kong Ah returns, and hands the clerk the bills for the food and drinks. The money Mahati has brought is taken as a down payment. Mahati cannot bear to tell Reri, who plays guitar happily, she thinks they will leave. Murnau’s juxtopositions of of a disparate Mahati and a joyous Reri, or the other way around, allow for an intense disquieting effect on his audience.

The next night, Mahati dreams of the bills. He also dreams of a place which has been called Tabu. A great shark waits there, guarding a pearl. As he dreams, Reri awakens to find Hitu aiming a spear at Mahati. She will shield him with her body. Hitu will lower his spear, in sadness. He feels their pain. Hitu leaves after Reri has begged him to give them one more moment. She falls asleep with Mahati, for the last time. When one sleeps, another wakes. They are two parts of the same whole.

Mahati goes to live out his dream. In his desperation, he will defy the great shark, and he will escape with the beautiful black pearl. Meanwhile Reri prepares to leave with Hitu. “I will come to you in your dreams, when the moon spreads it’s path across the sea,” she writes. The sea is a symbol of God, the moon a symbol of doom. As Mahati returns, he will drop Reri’s flower and race to save his love, race against time, against logic, against God. He swims and swims and charges through the ocean to reach Hitu’s ship. Waves crash against him. Perhaps he could have saved her, had the moon not cast its rays over the ocean, corrupting it. Mahati has defied God’s guard, the great shark, but he cannot defy the gods themselves. Mahati charges and charges, but the possesed Gods are impossible to defy. The societies couldn’t destroy Mahati and Reri, so the Gods do it themselves.

But what about Hitu. Poor Hitu. We should be feeling sorry for him. He is only the pawn of the Gods. He feels the pain of Reri and Mahati. Yet it is he who cuts the rope attached to the ship that Mahati grabs on to, in a moment of possesion by the ocean, which is in turn posessed by the moon.