Story highlights Seymour: Up until its strange ending, this year's Oscar ceremony had already been an above-average clutter of topical humor and sincerely noteworthy moments

With all these potentially transformative moments, it's a shame that all people will talk about is what led to the best picture award being announced twice

Gene Seymour is a film critic who has written about music, movies and culture for The New York Times, Newsday, Entertainment Weekly and The Washington Post. The opinions expressed in this commentary are his.

(CNN) "Moonlight" won. Let's be very clear about that before we talk about anything else.

The same Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences that has bestowed its best picture award to such glossy, hallowed artifacts as "Gone With the Wind," "An American in Paris" and "The Godfather" this year gave its biggest prize to a small, critically acclaimed and artistically daring film about a troubled African-American youth struggling with a broken home, confronting his sexuality and stalked by the prospect of violence.

The significance of this best picture award can't be understated and its essence, the potential broadening of storytelling possibilities for American movies, was best summarized earlier in the evening when "Moonlight" collected the best adapted screenplay Oscar for director Barry Jenkins and co-producer Tarell Alvin McCraney, who wrote the original semi-autobiographical stage play "In Moonlight, Black Boys Look Blue."

"This goes out to all those black and brown boys and girls and non-gender conforming, who don't see themselves, we're trying to show you and us," McCraney said in their acceptance speech.

At that point in the 89th annual Academy Awards , already groundbreaking in its broad presence of African-American nominees in several categories, many in the audience and millions watching on television believed that would be the only other major award "Moonlight" would collect -- besides the best supporting actor prize won by Mahershala Ali for playing the gangster who takes the baffled young protagonist under his care.

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