“The Rivals of Amzaiah King” is four or five movies in one, but what could have been jarringly uneven is mostly held together, thanks to the exceptionally gifted writer/director Andrew Patterson, whose acclaimed “Vast of Night” introduced us to a first-time, low-budget filmmaker who already had a deep understanding of cinematic storytelling. This one is part family drama, part crime story, part comedy (that school scene!), part heist story, part revenge, part coming of age, part tragedy, part comedy, so, kind of like life, plus the heartbeat throughout is one of the best soundtracks of the year.

The title character, ideal casting for Matthew McConaughey, who gives one of his career-best performances as a beekeeper and musician in a rural Oklahoma community. We first see him with his friends, performing in the parking lot of a drive-in restaurant. The group includes his lawyer, Rippy (Rob Morgan), and Stephen (Benjamin Hardesty, real-life member of The Last Bison band and composer of many of the film’s songs). Amziah fits comfortably in his life, patient and gentle, as a beekeeper must be, with the gift of deep appreciation for each moment, especially if it involves bees or music. He has a wry sense of humor, sharp observations, and engages in non-stop picaresque commentary that does not hide an essential stillness and absence of judgment that the people around him find reassuring. In this community, anyone can play music or sing and no one minds much if someone has done time in prison. Amziah routinely hires ex-cons who cannot get a job anywhere else.

The local police interrupt the parking lot concert to ask for Amziah’s help in identifying the owner of some stolen vats of honey that have been recovered. He tells them the only possible way is if there is an identifying mark in the bottom of one of the barrels. And the only way to find if there is one is to empty it out, a complicated process because “there’s nothing heavier than honey” and the only way to empty it is to heat it and turn it over to let the honey slide out. They all go to his processing facility and Amziah calls a former employee named Remmick (Jake Horwitz, who also appeared in “Vast of Night”) to come help. Remmick brings along a friend named Komar (Tony Revolori), who knows nothing about processing honey but brags about knowing someone who has a Granada guitar.

It all seems idyllically cozy and we may think we’re in a sort of updated, profane version of Mayberry, until a shocking and very bloody industrial accident sends one of the group to the hospital, the first of several unexpected turns of plot and tone.

Amziah stops at a diner and discovers that his waitress, is Kateri (newcomer Angelina LookingGlass), a young women he and his late wife fostered for two years when she was young. He can see that she is guarded, but he quietly invites her to hear his group perform later in the week and he is delighted when she shows up. Soon she has moved back in with him and is working with him at the hives. He even coaxes her into singing a little bit.

So, now it’s shifted into a family drama about reunion and resilience. Briefly. Another twist is coming and the second half gets into the crime story, with a theft of bees and honey, an amateur detective tracking it down and uncovering some other crimes, a hacker named Oat (Cole Sprouse), a sad death, a police chase, some racial issues (Kateri is native American), a heist, murder, Kurt Russell, and more. Patterson somehow manages to hold it together in part thanks to goregous, roots-infused music throughout (produced by T. Bone Burnett), golden-infused cinematography from M.I. Littin-Menz (also from “The Vast of Night”), and editing from Patrick J. Smith that lends an impressionistic, folkloric tone, adding coherence to the otherwise-jarring shifts.

LookingGlass is a real find, with a luminousness and steadiness that lends eloquence to her expressive face. There are stand-out scenes, one almost slapstick when Amziah is called to rescue an elementary school from a swarm of bees, all of the music scenes, especially the impromptu jam session in Amziah’s small dining room, and an elaborate heist scene with a pause for some heartfelt confidences. A few of the twists are too jarring, and twice-explained analogy of the bee society is a rare instance of Patterson explaining too much, contrary to his usual respect for the audience in leaving just a bit more unsaid than we get in the average film and letting us fill in the rest from our own imagination and experience.

This movie is itself an experience, immersive, moving, shocking, scary, and the kind of characters you will miss when they are gone.