I didn’t mean explicitly “narration” when I said narrative exposition since that isn’t it’s definition https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exposition_(narrative). Regardless I agree with all your points in isolation and when taken to an extreme. But a well crafted script that includes ALL possible methods of helping the audience appreciate the passage of time is the goal. No movie, except a literal 1:1 real-time story, can ever communicate the passage of time in any way OTHER than some form of exposition.
Your interstellar vs castaway example is exactly my point. If they had tried harder with LOTR they could have made it clearer to the audience the length and duration of their travels. As it stands, and as you said, it was a balancing act to stay with-in acceptable movie run time, hit all the hard plot points, include some exposition (again to hit important plot points), and create a movie that didn’t bore people to tears.
Fair points. I guess it just comes down to opinion on how effective they were at, and how important it was to, make the audience appreciate how long the journey was. I actually don’t have an opinion per say if they did it well or not. Like you said, it’s sort of a miracle they accomplished what they did, and as a movie I think it was great and a damn good book adaptation.