Didn't get his relationship with his Dad...

His father was horrible. Here Ditto was, a young, troubled boy allowed to prowl the streets of New York with a "friend" Antonio that terrified him. His father not only showed preference in many ways for Antonio over his own son, but also invalidated just about everything the boy said (e.g. "It's hot because it's summer, Ditto" over and over) and flipped between being supposedly loving and empathetic to abusive and dangerous. Ditto's conflict and guilt was then only compounded by being constantly reminded that his father wasn't all bad, and certainly wasn't as bad as Antonio's - but it should not have been a competition. They were both very poor parents, just in different ways.

I thought the scene with his father in the shower was very well done: his father is trying to communicate wit him but only sees things through his own eyes and is so emotionally dangerous that Ditto can't trust him. The old man is still stuck on Ditto somehow rescuing Antonio and doesn't even see that his child is in desperate peril - doesn't even ask what's bothering him, and it turns out the poor boy witnessed the murder of a close friend.

The relationship is complicated and is not exaggerated or stereotyped, which may be the cause of confusion, but that's because it's real. Real relationships aren't obvious or simple. A parent can be profoundly harmful and emotionally dangerous without ever laying a finger on their child.

I don't necessarily see the Dad or Dito as the person to blame.

Dito saw his Dad as someone who cared more for Antonio than he did for him. The Dad was completely clueless (or turned a blind eye) as to what was going on in Dito's life, the pain and suffering he had been through. As people already pointed out his Dad was more of a father to Antonio than he ever was to Dito. Antonio needed someone like that in his life because his father was horrible to him, but Dito also needed someone in his life like that as well and his father didn't provide it.

Also if you listen to the dialogue carefully you'll notice that nobody ever listened to Dito, especially his father. How many times did Dito say that his girlfriend was not a swimmer? And how many times did they keep saying she swam and asking about swim meets? Also with other things they talked about, off the top of my head I don't remember, but I specifically remember his father never listening to Dito.

Dito saw the life he was leading in Queens and didn't want to end up dead or in jail, he wanted to be something more, he wanted to make something of his life. His Dad said if he ever moved he would never talk to him again, so this puts him in a corner. Does he leave to try and make something of himself and lose his Dad in the process? Or does he lose himself in the streets just trying to make his father happy?

It's a great movie because it's really complex and no answer is really wrong.

I think a great part of the conflict between Dito and his dad stemmed from the fact that Dito was/is a very sensitive guy, towards the world and towards his father. He was brought up in a loving family which makes children very in-tune with their parents, even emotionally dependent as much as they may not like to admit it. Sure Antonio had the clear-cut *beep* home life, but you could confidently assume that his parents were never as close to him as Dito's were. So the moment Dito's dad disagreed with him, it were as if a great chunk of his life was going against his needs.

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I'm just now seeing this movie. All of the other posters are dead on, but I'd like to add that Dito's father is a generation removed and old enough to be his grandfather (the mom says this near the end of the movie).

So, the dad is much like another poster on this board who said that he was from the same neighborhood but 20 years older that the characters in the movie were at the time, that poster felt the movie was unrealistic because the neighborhood has "never been rough/bad". Yet other posters from that area and around the same age of the characters at the time say it was a bad neighborhood. Likewise, Dito's parents, who look like they never leave the house,don't understand what's going on around in Dito's life.

Also, at first, I thought Dito's dad had an unnatural interest in Antonio. Later, I understood it for what it was 1) an attempt to gather Antonio but 2) his desperate love for Dito and believing that Antonio could protect him from what he perceived as not a serious threat. To his way of thinking, Antonio was fufilling the father/protector role that he, himself, was too old to do.

The mom tried to tell the dad that Antonio is bad news but, as usual, the dad wasn't listening.

Taking away someone's choices is abusive imho. If an adult child wants to move away, and a parent responds like his Dad did, I call that abusive. His parents got to choose their life, to think they get to choose their son's life is just wrong and controlling. I definitely saw a controlling father - not sure how you didn't.