Minari is a well-made film — nicely acted, solidly structured, interesting, and a mild emotional workout. It’s about a South Korean family trying to make a go of farming in 1980s Arkansas, and it’s semi-autobiographical, based on the memories of the talented writer-director Lee Isaac Chung.

So far, it’s been universally praised, boasting both sky-high critic and audience ratings and, to some extent, deservedly so. Last week it garnered six Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture and Best Director. After racking up a number of film festival awards, Minari just won the Golden Globe for Best Foreign Language Film, a somewhat odd categorization for a film set and produced in America, partly in English and partly in Korean with English subtitles. In his Golden Globes acceptance speech, director Chung said his movie was about “a family trying to learn to speak a language of its own. It goes deeper than any American language and any foreign language.”

This universalizing summary of the film — that in its simple profundity, it transcends the potentially divisive specifics of language and culture — is very much in keeping with the hymns of critical praise it’s received. As NPR’s Bob Mondello puts it, “The filmmaker named his movie ‘Minari’ after a Korean herb grandma brought with her that is resilient and grows wherever it’s planted — a nice metaphor for immigrant families.” Stephanie Zacharek of Time magazine concurs, calling Minari “a gentle, lovely picture, one that acknowledges there really is no ‘immigrant experience,’ beyond the pure human experience of finding yourself adjusting to a new environment. . . . If its setting is specific, its vibe is universal.”